Unidirectional Charge Transport via Ripplonic Polarons in a Three-Terminal Microchannel Device

A. O. Badrutdinov, D. G. Rees, J. Y. Lin, A. V. Smorodin, and D. Konstantinov

Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 126803 – Published 23 March 2020

Abstract

We study the transport of surface electrons on superfluid helium through a microchannel structure in which the charge flow splits into two branches, one flowing straight and one turned at 90°. According to Ohm’s law, an equal number of charges should flow into each branch. However, when the electrons are dressed by surface excitations (ripplons) to form polaronlike particles with sufficiently large effective mass, all the charge follows the straight path due to momentum conservation. This surface-wave induced transport is analogous to the motion of electrons coupled to surface acoustic waves in semiconductor 2DEGs.

Received 29 August 2019
Revised 13 January 2020
Accepted 28 February 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.126803

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Electrical conductivity Polarons

Two-dimensional electron gas Wigner crystal

Dilution refrigerator

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

A. O. Badrutdinov^1,*, D. G. Rees^2,3,†, J. Y. Lin ¹, A. V. Smorodin¹, and D. Konstantinov¹

¹Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Tancha 1919-1, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
²NCTU-RIKEN Joint Research Laboratory, Institute of Physics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan
³RIKEN CEMS, Wako 351-0198, Japan

^*alexbadr@oist.jp
^†Present address: Cryogenic Ltd, 6 Acton Park Estate, The Vale, London W3 7QE, United Kingdom.

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Vol. 124, Iss. 12 — 27 March 2020

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